Yann stepped out of the room he shared with Anríq and turned off toward the bathroom. Yann froze in his tracks when he saw Neils standing in the hall.

  Neils didn’t see him. Neils kept jerking from one side to another, darting away from threats that weren’t there, and gasping in fright every time he did it.

  Yann stared down the hall while he decided what to do. He didn’t go near Neils. Yann had seen this too many times before.

  How long would this last? How long would it take Neils to come out of it—if he ever came out of it?

  Yann was still standing there when Rien came out of the room he shared with Yvan. Rien’s expression turned to a wall of ice when he saw Neils.

  “I think you better come in here, boy,” Rien muttered.

  Yann didn’t know what Rien wanted to talk to him about, but Yann found out when he entered his father’s bedroom.

  Yvan sat on the edge of the bed crushing his knees in both hands. His eyes darted around the room and in all directions. “They’re here!” he husked. “They’re right here in this room!”

  Yann sighed. “How long has he been like this?”

  “He was like this when I woke up this morning,” Rien replied.

  “We can’t take him out to the wall like this,” Yann remarked. “Either of them.”

  “What do you want to do?” Rien asked.

  Yann’s head shot up. “Me?! You’re the senior Watchman now. Niyazi is behind you and I’m junior to all of you.”

  Rien skewered him with a hard look, and without a word, Rien unsheathed both his blades and held them out to Yann. “You better take these.”

  Yann gaped at Rien in horror when he realized what Rien meant. It was happening exactly the way Yvan predicted. The whole Watch was going down with only Yann left standing.

  He gulped hard and took Rien’s weapons. Rien bent over Yvan and took his weapons, too. Rien handed them all over to Yann.

  He gathered them in his arms, left his father there, and went back out into the hall. Neils stood in exactly the same place jumping and shrinking from invisible enemies.

  He didn’t see Yann walk up to him and take his weapons, too. Now Yvan, Rien, and Neils were all unarmed. This truly was the greatest disaster Yann could imagine.

  Rien followed him downstairs and they stashed all those weapons in a broom closet. Heaven only knew what these men would use to defend the wall if anything attacked Tenby.

  Yann found Eliska in the living room. She’d untied Vidal.

  He sat on the floor with his knees propped up and his elbows resting on them.

  “Why did you untie him?” Yann demanded. “He’s supposed to be restrained.”

  “He’s back to normal,” she told him. “He doesn’t remember anything.”

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  Yann turned to Vidal. Vidal looked up at Yann with clear eyes. “How are you feeling this morning?” Yann asked.

  Vidal nodded. “I feel okay. Eliska was just telling me about the party we saw out in the Coil.”

  “So you don’t remember them? You don’t remember yelling at all of us in another language?”

  Vidal frowned. “I did?”

  “You sounded very insistent on whatever you were trying to tell us. You don’t remember fighting Neils and Niyazi so you could jump over the wall and run out into the Coil?”

  Vidal’s eyes popped. “I would have remembered that.”

  “Well, you did. Give me one reason why I should let you walk out of the house today.”

  Vidal’s features hardened. “You? You don’t let me do anything. You aren’t even a fully instated Watchman. I’m your senior. If anyone orders me to stay inside, it will be the Watch Commander.”

  “I’m the Watch Commander as of now,” Yann countered. “My father told me to take over if all of you went down—and it looks to me like you’re well and truly down. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Right then, Yvan came downstairs. He walked straight upright and glanced around at everyone exactly the way he always did. “Does anyone know what happened to my weapons? I had them right next to my bed last night. Now they’re gone.”

  Yann and Rien exchanged glances, and a second later, Niyazi came downstairs with Neils, Anríq, and Marine.

  They all started talking normally. Neils stayed quieter than usual and kept glancing around the room.

  Other than that, Yann didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in Yvan’s behavior. He didn’t seem to remember the episode from his bedroom. He didn’t remember Rien disarming him.

  Yvan pulled Vidal to his feet, asked him how he was feeling, and they both went on with their morning routine as usual.

  Vidal didn’t tell Yvan about Yann trying to take over as Watch Commander. Did Vidal even remember that?

  Yann would have started to doubt his own sanity if he didn’t keep exchanging glances with Rien. Rien’s expression told Yann loud and clear that he didn’t just imagine this.

  The group got through breakfast somehow or another. Cold dread crept into Yann’s guts as the time got closer for the Watchmen to go out to the wall. He could just imagine the disaster if one of them lost his head out there.

  What was Yann thinking? They already were losing their heads. Every single man here teetered on the brink of insanity. So why didn’t Yann? Why did he of all people escape whatever was wrong with them?

  Eliska and Anríq didn’t suffer from it, either. Eliska and Marine already dangled over the Dark, so why not Anríq? What protected him and Yann from the same fate?

  Yann had to go through the same process in reverse of taking all the weapons out of the broom closet and returning them to the men he took them from.

  “I don’t want them,” Rien muttered.

  “You better take them,” Yvan told him. “You won’t be any good to us on the wall without them.”

  Rien took them. He refused to look at anyone when he buckled his swords back on. Yann cringed when he gave Vidal back his axe and Yvan his swords.

  Yann planned to hang back and ask Rien what to do about this. The irony really bit that Yann was about to ask Rien what to do when Rien was the one who just as Yann what to do.

  This would definitely be the first time in history that Yann or Rien ever doubted Yvan’s judgment. What should Yann do—lock up his own father?

  Yann was really starting to consider the option, but he didn’t get a chance to ask Rien anything before Yvan ordered everyone out to the wall. Eliska and Anríq came with them. Only Marine went off somewhere else.

  Vidal walked out of the house at the front of the group. He talked to Yvan the whole time about which men Atian posted in different spots on the scaffold. Vidal seemed to have learned more about the Tenby defenders than anyone else in the Watch.

  Niyazi stayed near Neils when they left the house. Niyazi hovered extra close to Neils, either to protect him or to step in if anything went wrong.

  Yann and Rien stayed close to each other. Yann saw Anríq and Eliska trying to assume their previous formation with Eliska between the two boys.

  Yann wanted to stay near Rien today. Yann wanted to stay near anyone who realized just how explosive this situation had become.

  No one besides Rien seemed to realize because only Rien had been in that room with Yann this morning. Only Rien knew that none of these people should be armed—and yet all of them were armed.

  Yann would have liked to get as far away from all of them as possible, but he couldn’t. He had to go outside, climb up the stairs, and take his place on the scaffold with the others while they assessed the landscape surrounding Tenby.

  End of Chapter 36.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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